U.S. opens a national security review of TikTok’s acquisition of Musical.ly

Musical.ly was started by entrepreneurs in Shanghai. Although it may have had US and Japanese investors, I don&#x27;t think it was an American company. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Musical.ly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Musical.ly</a><p>&gt;&quot;It’s the first company to be headquartered in China, designed in China, but popular in the US,&quot; said Greylock investor Josh Elman. &quot;Finally we’re seeing talented people who live in that ecosystem in that world and actually transcend it and build products in the US.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;what-is-musically-2016-5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;what-is-musically-2016-5</a>

I highly recommend folks listen to recent episodes of Ben Thompson’s exponent podcast where he discusses TikTok and its influence in the USA.<p>He makes the point that US consumers become subject to Chinese censorship policies when using the platform while China outright bans or heavily restricts American companies from operating (eg google search, Facebook).

After the US claimed that Huawei was a national security threat only to drop this claim completely when China started cooperating on trade talks I honestly don&#x27;t know what to believe anymore.

It was clear to me how threatened Facebook was by TikTok when I brought it up with an employee in June.<p>They kept mentioning infinite scroll, and that everyone was supposed to be thinking about how to incorporate that into product.<p>After zuck discussed TikTok directly recently, I’m not surprised google and fb lobbyists would press for this investigation.<p>One question I have, is the real-time interests of millions of 16-24 yo Americans reported back to the Chinese government a national security concern?

TikTok is actually a great app. When I was a kid in the 00&#x27;s my friends and I used to carry around a video camera to make music videos. With TikTok you can do it with your cell phone.<p>They beat SnapChat, FB and Instagram on experience.<p>Censorship is something serious to consider, but these are mainly kids making music videos. They aren&#x27;t using it to organize campaigns.

Oct 14: &quot;TikTok has moved into Facebook’s backyard and is starting to poach its employees&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;14&#x2F;tiktok-has-mountain-view-office-near-facebook-poaching-employees.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;14&#x2F;tiktok-has-mountain-view-off...</a>

The article conveniently forgets to mention that Musical.ly was founded by Chinese founders and headquartered in Shanghai. Maybe they technically were an American company, but it&#x27;s not clear the outcome would have been much different from a &quot;national security&quot; perspective.

I know this a long time ago, they ban lgbt content and I never download the app on my phone. Chinese business is controlled by the state.

I would support a wholesale ban on Chinese acquisitions of American companies until American companies are allowed to acquire Chinese companies (or otherwise operate in China).<p>These ridiculous double standards from China are not free trade, and we should stop pretending it is.

It is crystal clear that TikTok is a pivot for China. I think this is the first Chinese application that beats the US (Silicon Valley) &quot;monopoly&quot;? It is a great business and cross cultural achievement.<p>It seems like the Chinese could be successful in duplicating SV even in a non democratic context.

TikTok is actually a great app. Content is very entertaining and it is actually easy to use. I still can&#x27;t figure out Snapchat.<p>Today it is just a way for me to burn 15 minutes, but I see plenty of potential and make the concerns of censorship and ownership valid concerns.

Does anyone have any insight into their revenue model? How are they succeeding where Vine failed or are they still just riding investor capital?

Bring back Vine, Twitter!<p>Why was it shuttered? It seemed like such a short-sighted move. Vine had such cachet and was fun to use &amp; create on it. RIP

I&#x27;ll never understand why (a) Vine was shut down, and (b) So many Americans are eager to rush out and use a Chinese social network.<p>I suspect (b) can be explained primarily through ignorance.

Twitter really screwed up by shutting down Vine. What a crazy thing to think that by doing so they may have generated a national security issue? Wild.

US companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google) censor people all the time.

It is not about censorship. It is about WHO censor WHO.

I am an American-born man of Western European descent. My girlfriend is a Chinese passport holder here on H1B. I am an anarchist.<p>I absolutely do not understand why there is so much hate for Chinese people, Chinese companies, or the Chinese government. Literally everything has flaws, and Western Europe and USA have plenty of them.<p>If you are not willing to say &quot;China does xyz but actually also my country does something similar to xyz too, and it&#x27;s definitely bad&quot;...<p>...then at the very least, please do not act as if your statements about Chinese nationals are 100% true for every individual. Humans are humans, they differ in meaningful ways but they also deserve dignity and respect.

FaceApp redux? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2019&#x2F;07&#x2F;18&#x2F;heres-what-we-know-about-russian-company-behind-faceapp&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2019&#x2F;07&#x2F;18&#x2F;heres-w...</a>

Shouldn&#x27;t this issue be addressed by the free market rather than by the government getting involved? If there is evidence that the app censors content to serve CCP propaganda, then consumers can make the choice not to use it.

Time for some savvy US entrepreneurs to spin up a TikTok alternative..

There are entire sub-genres of lesbians, trans, gays, and all sorts of LGBT people on TikTok. I don&#x27;t see a ban on the platform

unrelated question: but why would any investigator leak information like this? who benefits?

The censorship argument against TikTok seems odd given that Trump supporters are a prominent voice on the platform (I&#x27;m a huge TikTok user). Wouldn&#x27;t its Chinese masters want to silence support for him as well? Why haven&#x27;t they?<p>To be clear, I don&#x27;t like the idea of foreign state controlled major social platforms opaque to US oversight. I&#x27;m commenting specifically on the argument that TikTok silences Hong Kong supporters.

YouTube: That&#x27;s a nice video streaming business you got there TikTok. A shame if anything ever happened to it.

While I agree that Chinese soft imperialism is bad, I think it&#x27;s tremendously funny that Americans are complaining about it now, after years of using military and economic power to enforce a similar imperialism everywhere.

So HN changed the headline to remove TikTok which is a name I reconized and replaced it with &quot;ByteDance&quot; and &quot;Musical.ly&quot;, which I&#x27;ve never heard of before. It was originally displayed on HN the same as it is in the article.<p>From the article, I know that the new headline is more precise. But it&#x27;s much less informative, I wouldn&#x27;t have clicked the article under this name.

For context: title appears to have changed from &quot;U.S. opens national security investigation into TikTok&quot; to &quot;U.S. opens a national security review of ByteDance’s acquisition of Musical.ly&quot;.

Why was the title changed from “tiktok” to musical.ly?

China now flexing its soft power...

There is a massive push to make TikTok a thing. But it is the most stupid app I have ever seen. So they might as well stop pushing the fake videos online.

So a president who basically hands victory after victory to foreign governments and who effectively reduced the toolbox of the United States to shape foreign relations to &quot;sanctions&quot; and &quot;tariffs&quot; is not considered a threat to national security. Everything&#x27;s fine with that.<p>But if just one foreign social network app manages to divert some serious attention of US teenagers from Facebook for the first time in Internet history, THAT of course is a threat to national security.<p>Seriously...is this a parody?

&gt; They said they were concerned ... whether China censors content seen by U.S. users. They also suggested TikTok could be targeted by foreign influence campaigns.<p>That reminds me of Soviet Union. Government choosing what kind of propaganda citizens should watch.<p>&gt; He cited questions about why TikTok had “only had a few videos of the Hong Kong protests that have been dominating international headlines for months.”<p>Does politburo^W democratic government has a right to decide that a privately owned app must show Honkong protest videos? If yes, then what is the minimum quota of Honkong protest videos the app needs to meet? Should other apps, like dating or chess apps, show Honkong protest videos too?<p>&gt; The company has said U.S. user data is stored in the United States<p>They should not. The data are better protected from such US senators if stored in China.<p>&gt; Any platform owned by a company in China which collects massive amounts of data on Americans is a potential serious threat to our country<p>And what about US companies collecting data on foreign citizens?<p>&gt; Chinese company may be censoring politically sensitive content<p>Some might call it moderation.